Description du projet
Expliciter la littérature aristotélicienne médiévale
Le projet THEIA financé par l’UE mènera une étude sur la paraphrase de De Caelo d’Aristote réalisée par Thémistius, philosophe et rhétoricien byzantin du IVe siècle. Ces paraphrases ont présenté la philosophie d’Aristote au début de la période byzantine. Cependant, le texte grec d’origine de De Caelo est perdu et Thémistius avait basé sa paraphrase sur le texte hébreu. De ces éditions, seules une version hébraïque médiévale et une version hébraïque traduite en latin ont survécu. De ce fait, le projet explicitera le texte hébreu médiéval en le modifiant, en le traduisant en anglais et en le commentant. Cela permettra aux érudits de mieux comprendre l’aristotélisme du IVe siècle, et aux philologues d’avoir accès au texte aristotélicien tel qu’il était lu au IVe siècle.
Objectif
THEIA is the resubmission of the project “Themistius, Heavens and Elements. Interpretations of Aristotle’s Cosmology Across the Ages” that has received the Seal of Excellence 2019. THEIA is a project on the paraphrase of Aristotle’s De Caelo by the 4th century rhetor and philosopher Themistius. It aims to shed light on Themistius’ presentation of the Aristotelian cosmos, that is contained chiefly in this paraphrase. Its importance in the history of Aristotelianism is beyond doubt, as it is the first complete exegesis of the De Caelo that has come down to us, but adequate study of it has been hampered by the fact that the original Greek is lost: only a medieval Hebrew version of the lost Arabic version, and in a Hebrew-into-Latin version survive. Both are edited, but the Latin is derivative, and the Hebrew text requires a new critical edition. THEIA will edit, translate into English, and comment upon the Hebrew text. Once the task accomplished, this will allow the scholars in the field to get a more complete picture of 4th century Aristotelianism. To the importance of THEIA for the history of philosophy another reason of interest should be added, that concerns the text of Aristotle. The Hebrew version allows the scholar who is conversant with Themistius’ exegetical habits to reconstruct some passages in the Greek original, and to single out the Aristotelian lemmata of the De Caelo interspersed in Themistius’ wording. The retroversion of these lemmata into Greek will provide the philologists with an extremely important piece of documentation: parts of the text of Aristotle’s De Caelo as it was read in the 4th century, i.e. five centuries before the most ancient ms of it. In this sense, THEIA can be considered an interdisciplinary project that, through the reconstruction and interpretation of a Greek work transmitted in Hebrew and Latin, paves the ground to a fruitful cooperation of philosophical and philological skills.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EFCoordinateur
75794 Paris
France